Quotes About Literature

good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.

Teachers, let me tell you, are born deceivers of the lowest sort, since what they want from life is impossible — time-freed, existential youth forever. It commits them to terrible deceptions and departures from the truth. And literature, being lasting, is their ticket.

If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough. The other view is a lie of literature and the liberal arts, which is why I did not succeed as a teacher, and another reason I put my novel away in the drawer and have not taken it out.

I like writing that's smart on the page.

Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.

It's great to be anywhere as a writer. It saves you from implication in the ugliness of the place and justifies your being there. You can spend all day jerking off as long as you describe it well.

If the experience of the Third Reich teaches us anything, it is that a love of great music, great art and great literature does not provide people with any kind of moral or political immunization against violence, atrocity, or subservience to dictatorship.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. HENRY MILLER

Writing may be an art, but it is certainly a craft.

Desarrolla interés en la vida según la estás viendo: en la gente, en las cosas, en la literatura, en la música; el mundo es tan rico, bulle con espléndidos tesoros, con almas hermosas y personas interesantes. Olvídate de ti mismo». HENRY MILLER

I'm afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page.

It seemed that in Paris you could discuss classic literature or architecture or great music with everyone from the garbage collector to the mayor.

I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.

I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him.

No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature).

I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.

The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.

Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.

What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.

When we're onstage we're not literature, we're sitcom. You have to have catchphrases.

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.